Beyond The Masks Part 10
by Isabella GL
Summary: Guerrera had discovered his prey. Holly is battling with her feelings for Roger.


Holly went to look for Roger later that day and found him in the lobby, engrossed by a novel. _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, she read over his shoulder. A personal favourite of hers, too. She sat in the armchair next to him while he marked the page and put the book aside.

"Did you enjoy your time by the pool today?" she started in a derisive tone.

Roger looked nonplussed before grinning broadly. "Oh, you mean with my new friend, Brandi?"

"That's the one."

"Did you know that she's a neurosurgeon? Fascinating woman," he added, thoroughly enjoying the conversation.

"Fascinating cleavage, you mean."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were jealous."

"Well, you do know better, so shut your pie hole. I need to talk to you about something."

"Do you have to be so unpleasant about it?"

Holly only scoffed in reply. Roger looked at his watch, and said: "It's nearly time for dinner. Why don't we go get changed and meet on the patio in an hour? We can discuss whatever you need to discuss over some food. That is, if you can stand my presence for that long."

"I'll live," she said as she got up to go back to her room.

* * *

Guerrera picked up the phone after the third ring, as usual. He hated to look eager for news.

"Yes?"

"We found them. They are at the El Paradiso Hotel. Should we get them?" said Miguel.

Guerrera took a drag of his cigarette and slowly exhaled before replying: "Nope. Book me a room as close as theirs as possible."

"They aren't sleeping in the same room."

"Really? Interesting. Then get one next to hers."

"Under what name?"

Guerrera thought for a moment; he loved to go under aliases. "Diego Garcia Marquez."

* * *

"I am glad that we can get to spend some time together," Roger said cautiously as they sat down to dinner. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked in the candle light but the words died on his lips; now was not the time to scare her off.

Holly shook her head, almost in disbelief. She was still put off by the fact that he was being so nice to her and she told him so. "This is so weird. We argue all the time; about WSPR, about Blake. We really don't get along at all, Roger."

Roger waited for the waiter to serve the wine before replying. "Well, we do now, or at least we did until you lost your memory. I really wish that you could believe that."

"Put yourself in my shoes. Or better yet, try to remember how it was between us back in 1990. Surely you didn't want to marry me back then?"

Roger forced himself to look back to that part of his past. He remembered being angry or annoyed with her most of the time. She could get under his skin like no other woman. But he also remembered that underneath it all he wanted her anyway; that had never changed in all the years he had known her, however furious she could make him.

"I can see how it would be difficult for you to picture us as a happy couple. We did come a long way since then. If you could just remember…" His voice trailed off when he realized how futile his comment was.

"Actually, this is what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you ever heard of a woman named Jenna?"

Roger almost choked on his mouthful. "Who told you about her?"

"I don't want you to get your hopes up, but I started having these visions a while ago and I want to know if they were real or not. Ross confirmed that at least one of them was."

Despite her warning, Roger couldn't help to rejoice. "That's wonderful news! What was it about?"

Holly looked away towards the canal, suddenly feeling awkward. She wasn't used to sharing her inner most thoughts with Roger, even if he was now her husband. "I had a vision of me taking care of you that time you were hiding in at my house because you had been shot."

"You saved my life," Roger simply said.

They both ate in silence for a few minutes before he spoke again. "Jenna is my ex-wife. We were together on and off for a couple of years."

"I remember you coming to my house and talking to me about her, and also I remember a tuna sandwich. Does it ring a bell or I am just plain crazy?"

Roger put his fork down, laughing. "You hadn't eaten at all that day except for a miserable grapefruit, so I made one for you. And I kissed you afterwards. For weeks that summer I tried to convince you to marry me, but you wouldn't hear of it. So I went back to Jenna, but of course that didn't last for long."

"So, I was right, those really are memories. That's a relief, I guess, although I have to admit that it all looks a bit surreal to me. So many crazy things seemed to have happened to everyone I know, it's as if we were soap opera characters or something!"

She bowed her head. "It's just hard to take in all in stride."

Sensing a change of mood was in order, Roger tried to cheer up for the rest of the meal, telling her about the whereabouts of the people she knew in Springfield, doing his best to be entertaining. It was only an hour later, when they were walking back to the lobby, that Holly had an idea. "Hey, maybe I could ask that young neurosurgeon to take a look at me?"

"You mean Brandi?"

Holly looked annoyed. "No, Silly. I mean that doctor in Springfield, Daniel St. John."

Roger looked at her for a while, at a loss for words. How could he tell her that she had been engaged to that man, and that he had turned out to be a psycho? How could he tell her that he, Roger, was the one that had to shoot him before he could kill her?

"Do you want to go for a drink somewhere?" he asked instead. You're going to need if we are to continue this conversation."

* * *

To his surprise, Holly took the news about Daniel rather calmly.

"This must have been a terrible ordeal, but I have no recollection of the time I spent with him. It's like it all happened to someone else, do you understand what I mean?" she said, finishing her second beer and ordering another.

"I'm glad you take it this way."

"I do hope this was the only psycho I needed to be told about though."

Roger laughed in his glass of scotch. "Yes, you know all the bad things."

Holly took a deep breath, turning serious again. There was a subject that they had not broached yet, and she wasn't sure if she was ready. On the other hand, she had to know.

She started in a soft voice. "Roger, I think we should talk about our life together. I've had all these flashbacks about us, but I still don't know why we decided to be together again. You're the one holding that last piece of the puzzle."

Roger thought for a while before he answered. They had hurt each other time and time again over the years, he probably more than her. He recalled the time he had fired her from the station, or the time, not so long ago, when he had toyed with Alexandra Spaulding to the point where he had almost lost Holly forever.

"I don't know, maybe it's a miracle that we found our way towards each other. I am not an easy person to live with-"

"A euphemism if I ever heard one!" Holly interrupted.

"Ok, ok! We had our fights, and I did rotten things to you over the years, but you did me a couple of bad turns too. I could go over each of them in detail, and I probably will at some point, but what I'm aiming at is that despite it all, we loved each other too much to be apart. It's as simple as that."

Holly stared at him as if the key to her past was lying somewhere in his eyes. "It does seem simple when you say it, so how come I don't feel it?"

"How DO you feel?" Roger asked, dreading the answer but needing to hear it all the same.

It would have been easy to lie and to say that she hated him, but Holly felt like she had to give him an honest answer. Maybe something good could come out of it in the end.

"I feel about a million things about you, Roger. I'm angry about all the things that you did to me and to all the others in the past. It pisses me off that you never really paid for them."

She paused, collecting her thoughts. "Sometimes, I'm still afraid of what you might do to me, but at the same time, if you really, really must know the truth, I am still attracted to you. And I am ashamed of it, because who in their right mind would be attracted to their rapist, right?"

Before he could react to her last words, she turned away from him in anger, picked up her purse and left for the hotel.

* * *

She tried to ignore the sound of Roger pounding on her door and squeezed the pillow over her head.

"Holly! Let me in! We have to talk about this. I can't let you think that I'm still the kind of man that would hurt you like that!" she heard him say.

Others words of him slowly took shape in her mind, bringing back to another hotel room some years back. " I seem to have this opportunity to make some small amends and I never thought I'd have that chance. I don't know what dark force is moving you to be with me tonight, but I know that I am responsible for it and I know that I will never, never hurt you like that again."

She got up and unlocked the door. "Fine, I give up. Go ahead, talk to me; convince me that you're good for me now!"

She faced him in the doorway and waited for him to talk, while he did his best not to look down at her gauzy nightgown, taken aback by her near-nakedness. Now that he had a chance to plead his case, he found himself speechless. As the seconds ticked away and they remained silent, they were both hit full force by the desire they shared and that Holly could no longer deny.

She took a few steps back. You cannot use sex to numb the pain; she chided herself, thinking about the night she had tried to seduce Johnny. On the other hand, Roger was her husband, so technically there was nothing wrong with it. Was it?

She turned away, confused, and went to the window. Roger stayed by the door, as if rooted to the spot. "Do you want me to leave?" he asked.

She didn't answer and after a while, she heard him walked to the door. That's when she knew that, whether it was a mistake or not, she would ask him to stay.

"Wait," she asked, and she crossed the room to join him, closing the door behind them.

* * *

There was violence in the way she undressed him and threw him on the bed. She knew it but she couldn't help it; the rush of emotions was too intense to be reined in. Roger tried to slow down the pace, but he too was soon caught up by the frenzy that seemed to possess her. She pulled him in her arms, wanting to feel him ever closer to her, ever deeper within her. In the end, she cried his name as if it had been wrenched from her throat.

Later that night, Roger cautiously got up and walked to the window. Their love-making, if he could call it that, had left him with a bitter aftertaste; he was aware that Holly had given him everything but her heart. Without it, he felt the whole encounter had been meaningless. He turned back toward the bed, gazing at her sleeping figure. The whole scene had the quality of a battlefield, but neither of them had won.

Before silently leaving the room, he vowed not to let her touch him again until she would do it with a loving hand.


End file.
